Legal Aid: equal access to justice

Washington, D.C.-- Because of severe learning disabilities, he had never been employed and lived in his parents' house for his whole life. When his parents died, the home was in their names with debts against the property of more than $100,000. Their son was at risk of losing the only home he had ever known.

Fortunately, he found his way to Legal Aid Services of Oregon for help. There, a staff attorney helped him find the legal documents to settle his parents' estate and convey the title, negotiated with creditors to settle the debts, and helped him qualify for a property tax deferral provided disabled senior citizens.

Like this client, the people who come to legal aid programs are the most vulnerable among us. They are women seeking protection from abuse, parents trying to obtain child support, and families facing unlawful evictions or foreclosures that could leave them homeless.

To help low-income Americans with pressing civil legal problems, Congress established the Legal Services Corporation in 1974, and the corporation provides federal grants each year to 137 nonprofit programs, including Legal Aid Services of Oregon. Congress created LSC to promote equal access to justice and to provide high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income individuals and families.

The nation, however, faces a "justice gap," and the recession is widening the gap. Nearly 51 million Americans, including almost 700,000 Oregonians, qualify for civil legal aid from LSC-funded programs. That means they have an income of less than 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline (for a family of four, $27,563 a year).

With the downward shift in the economy, millions more Americans for the first time are or will be finding themselves facing poverty. Less than 20 percent of low-income Oregonians with pressing civil legal problems are able to obtain the assistance of a lawyer, according to current estimates. In a 2005 nationwide study, LSC documented that for every eligible client LSC-funded programs were able to assist, one eligible applicant was turned away because of a lack of resources.

Oregon has not ignored the challenge of providing civil legal aid to the poor. Individual attorneys and law firms, the Campaign for Equal Justice, the state and local bar associations, the Oregon Law Foundation, the state legislature and local governments and many private foundations donate time and money on behalf of civil legal aid.

Still, in Oregon and elsewhere, funding and resources do not keep pace with requests for help. Legal Aid Services of Oregon, for example, has an office in Pendleton with only three full-time attorneys and two part-time attorneys to serve six counties, to cover an area of 14,011 square miles -- making it virtually impossible to fulfill the promise of "Equal Justice Under Law," the bedrock legal principle inscribed on the U.S. Supreme Court building.

I have worked in legal aid for more than 40 years and when I reflect on what motivated me to be a legal aid lawyer, it is my belief that providing civil legal services to the poor is central to fundamental fairness, due process, and equal protection under law. In his first inaugural address, our third president, Thomas Jefferson, listed the "essential principles of our government" -- first among them was "equal and exact justice to all."

But the fact is that the majority of poor Americans do not have access to justice. At a time of economic hardship, federal, state and local governments must step up their efforts to provide high-quality legal assistance to the poor. These times require all of us to keep working to make the promise of equal justice a reality.

Helaine Barnett is in her sixth year as president of the Legal Services Corporation. The LSC Board of Directors meets in Portland on April 24-25.